


Азӓртный

by Kit



Category: Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-22
Updated: 2011-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-22 22:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/243331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sanya is yet an other idiot worried about Karrin Murphy, and he knows it. Written post-Changes and pre-Ghost Story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lisafer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisafer/gifts).



Азӓртный

> _(adjective)_
> 
> _...Usually translated as: adventurous, animated, passionate; heated, venturesome; sometimes describes someone who gets carried away by something, or is prepared to stake a lot on something; a gambler (figurative), games of chance._ –Natalia Gogolitsyna, 93 Russian Words.

It’s a cliché as tired as the thing vampires have with girls in lace nightdresses, or Soviet architecture, but there are just some things you can _say_ in Russian that makes English look like a laundry list. You might laugh. A lot of people have. Not the good Father, and Michael would just nod and be grave over his white fence, but say that sort of thing to Dresden and all you’d get is a slow, obnoxious grin.

_"Do svi-fucking-daniya.”_

Idiot. I can hear him now, even if he did manage to get himself shot. Broke his back, burnt the world, kissed a Fairy Queen, saved his baby daughter, and got shot in the back. English doesn’t make much sense of that level of crazy.

Watching Karrin Murphy with the _Einherjaren_ was a wordless thing. No one in the room could have the breath for it.

She had been fierce before and during Chichén Itzá, all wild eyes and the sort of grin that should make me step back, all meek and afraid. But I am not a sensible person. I’m a black agnostic from rural Russia, with the sword of hope. Sensible wouldn’t have lasted a week. And the only reason Murphy hadn’t fought like a demon back then is because no demon could have come near her in those moments, with or without _Fidelacchius_ in her hand.

Now, she is awe-inspiring. Skaldi Skjeldson has her in practise-room dirt (well, tile and mats. Marcone is fussy, like most _bratva_ ) and she is _still_ awe-inspiring, but some of that clarity has gone, and I do not like what has crept into its place.

“When are _you_ going to join in, comrade?” She drawls it, insult and all, her buzzed hair dark with sweat while she coughs and eases her back, still on the ground after the usual insult exchange with the overly large hammer of Valhalla. He slams the door, laughing.

“Against him?” The room rings with echoes.  “You’ve got to be kidding. I like my limbs. They are _good_ limbs.”

“Against _me_. I’m sick of all this protective shit.” She peels out of the layers that keep her ribs from turning into powder, grinning, and the florescent light catches the sweat along her arms and shoulders. The shifting finework that makes up the musculature of her neck and back.  

“What did I say about good limbs?”

“Damnit, Sanya.”

I smile, keeping still as she comes closer. Too close, and reeking, though more of grief than sweat. “If you came with me, Ms. Murphy, then we _would_ have to practice.   _Esperacchius_ and _Fidelacchius_ always worked well together.”  

Her lips thin. “I’m still not in need of a career change. And I’m a bit _busy_ , in case you hadn’t—”

“—pups and low-practitioners, criminals and straights.” I watch her flinch. “It’s not doing you any favours, Karrin.”

Her hand is solid against my chest, rocking me back. “I have the choice. I re-make it, every day.”

I grasp for her wrist. Stupid idea. She flips me onto the soaked practice matting, dense and coppery with blood and effort, and all I can do is trip her legs, so she lands on top of me, elbows sharp in my ribs and her breath rapid against my face.  

“Shut _up,_ ” she says, but the coldness isn’t quite right. Again. I should know. Russian.

“No,” I wheeze. “Mine is a hopeful nature.”

The pun does something I have not seen in her, through all the madness we have seen.

She laughs.  

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanya and Karrin talk again, post-Ghost Story, pre-Cold Days.

I am back in the Batcave. Stupid name, though apparently it fits Dresden the way the rest of this place does not. I was never into comics. Karrin, still buzzed and still the size of a breadbox, surveys me.

“You’ve missed a lot.”

There is subtle emphasis on _lot_ , and her hands clench and unclench in a slow yet nervy rhythm that I have never seen from her. _Hectic_ is not a word that fits Murphy. Still, I smile.

“Can’t be helped. Things to do. Heavy sword.”

She groans as I laugh. “I don’t know you well enough to make compensation jokes.”

“That should _stop_ you?”

“Point.”

“If you had lit the moon on the odd shift,” I tell her, “I might have come back sooner.”  

“Moonlighting, Sergei,” she says drily. I've missed a joke somewhere. “And I protected your damn swords from Sapphic white court crazies, so you—do _not_ say—”

“—I wish I’d seen _that_ —”

“—you wished you’d seen it. It sounds—” she swallows, making me think of the other strange things I had heard snatches of from Forthill. Spooks and Ectomancers that actually did their job: Dreseden-as- _привидение_. She watches my face as I watch hers, and I do not know what she sees, but makes her slump a little. “The problem,” she says, turning from me and pacing her practice room, "Is that you don’t _kill_ demons.”

Her words are heavy, and her eyes hard and bright as she turns back to me. “You make them _repent_. The Denarians, and that’s not what I can do with demons, right now. And I hate that, so I don’t want to even _touch_ the swords, lest they—shit.” She shakes her head. “In case I’m not worthy of them. And doesn’t _that_ sound maudlin?”

“I happen to be very good at maudlin.”

“I’m serious!”

“So am I.” She has no idea. I think of Rosanna, and blood on snow. It’s my turn to shake my head. Put us at a bar, and I think we might one-up each other into a stupor.

“What are you smiling at?”

“When Shiro made _me_ repent, I didn’t stop crying for a week.”

She eyes me, suspicious of mockery, before some memory tugs her face into blankness. “Dresden _said_ once,” she mutters. “Said you made—”

“—young choices.” I shrug. “He’s the one who actually brought a Denarian into a _church_.”

She laughs, faint. “He was a dick, and he’s gone now. _Really_ gone.”

“I missed that, too. Forthill was...entranced. And worried for you.”

“They’re all worried for me. All those children look at me like I’ve gone and done a Rag Lady on them, and think I don’t notice.”

I shrug again, sitting on the hard floor, by back against the wall and legs stretched out while she makes her circuit.    




 “You are...” I consider her, hands slowly clasping. “You are very intense. As you have always been, and yet...” Another shrug. “It would be easy to make a tragedy out of you, this moment.”

She practically spits, all colour leaving her face. “You sonofabitch _fuck_ —”

“—but I do not.” I hold out a hand, letting my hip flask fall into it, half expecting both to be broken.

“And you do not, either.”


End file.
